Findings

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to analyze NYC vehicle collisions data, and to extract insights that may benefit the general public.

This dataset includes data from 2012-07-01 to 2022-1-24.

Results

  1. We see number of collisions decreasen siginificantly during 2020. This is likely due to the COVID-19 qurantine.

  2. Manhatthan is the most dangerous borough for drivers. For the last 10 years, Manhattan has almost 13,000 collisions per square mile. This is 116% more collisions per square mile than the 2nd place Brooklyn, with 6,000 collisions per square mile.

  1. Within Manhatthan, lower Manhatthan is the most dangerous area. Some parts of lower Manhatthan can see up to 1000 collisions per sq mile per year, almost 3 collisions a day per sq mile.

The following picture demonstrates the 2022 collision cases.

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NYPD do not record crashes in some areas, hence the black-shaded areas.

Date source:

https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/Motor-Vehicle-Collisions-Crashes/h9gi-nx95

Import library and data

Basic Data Exploration

How does the automobile collision counts differ yearly in each NYC borough?


We observed two notable trends in NYC's vehicle collisions from 2012 to 2022:

  1. We see a moderate decline in vehicle collisions from 2015 to 2016.
  2. We see a steep decline in vehicle collisions from 2019 to 2020. This is most likely caused by the COVID-19 qurantine.

What is the most dangerous borough?

Which borough are we most likely to get into a collsion?


Given Manhatthan's large population density and popularity, it only makes sense for it to be the most dangerous borough.

For the last 10 years, Manhattan has almost 13,000 collisions per square mile. This is 116% more collisions per square mile than the 2nd place Brooklyn, with 6,000 collisions per square mile.

Note that a better area estimate would be road area instead of total borough area. It's possible that some boroughs have more streets than other boroughs.

What are the most dangerous zipcodes?

Let's only look at recent data for relevancy. If we want to avoid getting into car crashes, which neighborhoods should we avoid driving in?

According to the data, lower manhatthan seems to be the most dangerous area to be driving in. Especially the zones near the bridges.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, since lower manhatthan has some of the most popular neighborhoods in NYC.

The top 5 most dangerous zip codes are (10036, 10018, 10022, 10016, 10013).

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There are a few zip codes that have few info about them online, such as 10000.

They are all fairly small & have few crashes. Let's ignore them.

Why do we not see data for some areas?

NYPD do not record collisions in some areas such as the LGA airport. They also redistributed some crashes from central park to nearby zipcodes.

We can see our suspicisions are correct. NYPD do not record collisions into their official data (OR the crash data from those area is withheld from public).